


Practice

by B_Radley



Series: Fulcrum and Covenant: Genesis [48]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Beginnings, F/F, Kissing, Practice makes perfect, Recovery, Trauma, barrisoka - Freeform, brain worms aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28442883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Radley/pseuds/B_Radley
Summary: Two padawans recover from their recovery trip on a slow boat to Coruscant and the Temple.Without resorting to sabacc or more lightsaber practice. Innocently, of course.
Relationships: Barriss Offee/Ahsoka Tano
Series: Fulcrum and Covenant: Genesis [48]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/981186
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	Practice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gabby (Kirahsoka)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirahsoka/gifts).



> A bit of angsty fluff for Gabby for their birthday. This is a new experience writing totally from Barriss’s POV. Also, I did the thing with the three ‘S’s’ at the end of our heroine’s possessive name. Hope that you enjoy!

Barriss Offee watches her companion lift herself from the floor, then call her lightsaber to her hand again. Her blue eyes narrow at Barriss, but soon calm, with just that tiny bit of snark that is present in any combat situation.

 _Well, actually any competitive situation_ , Barriss thinks. _Or when she’s breathing._

She closes her eyes, reaching out to connect with the Force. As she does, she thinks about the three days that they had left on the ‘slow boat to Coruscant’, as Ahsoka’s master had termed it. The one that would help them recover from the other medical ship that they had taken to recover from Geonosis.

The one that was supposed to an easy trip, while on a medical supply run. Her mind flips, as it mostly does, even after a week of recovery from the brain worms. She tries to shove the sensation of the worm moving its way through her nasal cavity.

Her mind stops in mid-image. She feels her breath coming in gasps. The deck of the cargo hold is hard against her knees, as her heartrate increases even more, her breathing being dragged with it. She feels the lightsaber drop from her hands and automatically sheathe. She tries to keep the sobs from erupting; this is the first time that she has been near anyone that could seen this. Something she’d managed even though she and Ahsoka shared quarters.

Barriss feels a strong hand on her right shoulder. Oddly, she focuses on that grip, unaccountably attached to a skinny orange arm, she knows. The grip stays on her shoulder, even as she tries to shake it off. The other hand moves next to the one attached to her shoulder. Barriss doesn’t open her eyes, even as she feels an odd movement, one that rustles against her robe. She hears something that sounds like cloth dropping to the deck. Some part of Barriss’s mind understands that Ahsoka had just taken off the glove and bracer on her right hand.

That hand places itself on the opposite shoulder, but only for an instant. She feels skin on her cheek; skin that is much cooler than her own, but comforting nonetheless. Even with the cooler body temperature, the hand and its owner exude warmth. Warmth that she feels not just on her skin, but other places as well.

Barriss shakes her head, trying to free herself of thinking of where those warmths are. Warmths that had bubbled to the surface as both of them had been trapped in a Separatist tank, underneath thousands of tons of rocks. Her eyes snap open, taking in those cobalt eyes—eyes that look almost too big for her face.

Eyes that reflect nothing but care, just as they had on the ship with the worms. Just as they had under the rocks on Geonosis. When they weren’t concentrating on the mental equivalent of banging those small horns against whatever hard surface or problem that stood in the way of their survival, or the task at hand. All while forcing Barriss to keep following her to the solution, no matter how insane it sounded.

Barriss’s eyes drop to Ahsoka’s lips. She feels her face flush as she concentrates on those pillows...

 _Stop it,_ she thinks. _No. You can’t. You’re both Jedi. Jedi don’t love._

She is able to stop herself from rolling her eyes at that. She remembers hearing noises in Master Unduli’s quarters, when she was much younger. She had managed to stop from opening the door from her padawan quarters, stopping it before it gave the usual creak at more than five centimeters. She had seen her master, clothed only in short, white shift, her long hair unbound, pulling another figure into a deep embrace.

More than an embrace. Barriss had only gotten a sensation of blue skin and lekku, before the door had closed behind her master’s visitor. She had watched as her master had stood in the dim light, in a mostly open garment, a soft smile on her usually composed face.

Barriss would never forget that smile. She’d seen smiles from her master before and since, smiles of pride at Barriss’s accomplishments, as well as smiles reserved for her fellow masters and knights but never that particular one. A smile on a face that is completely relaxed, without a care in the universe.

 _This isn’t helping, Offee,_ she thinks.

Ahsoka’s eyes stay fixed on hers. A slight smile—a harbinger of that trademarked, almost weaponized smirk—grows on those lips, as well as traveling to her eyes.

“Think we’ve had enough sparring? Maybe you weren’t quite recovered for lightsaber practice,” Ahsoka says. “For me to kick your ass,” she finishes.

Barriss does complete the full eyeroll at that moment. “I seem to remember the last round a bit differently. You were the one chasing your saber around the deck after I hooked it.”

“I don’t know where you get your delusions,” Ahsoka says with an unfamiliar serious look on her features. Barriss raises her eyebrow, just before she hears the giggle from the younger apprentice.

To her surprise, Ahsoka pulls her closer, then rests her forehead against Barriss’s. “Seriously, Barriss. Are you okay? We can go back to our quarters. We don’t have to stand watch or anything.” She looks down. “We can go back to doing things that I can actually beat you at.”

Barriss smiles. She feels the outline of Ahsoka’s akul-tooth headdress against the top of her mantle. “I don’t know if I could face another round of sabacc, or that Corellian dice game that your clan-master taught you before the war.” She lifts up from where her head touches Ahsoka’s. “Besides, you’re not too bad with your saberwork. You’ve weren’t shabby to begin with you’ve come a long way in the last few days even. You’re a natural.”

She is treated to the sight of the blue stripes on Ahsoka’s lekku turning a brighter hue. She looks down. “I’ve had good teachers,” Barriss can only just make out.

Ahsoka looks up. For a moment, their eyes lock. She stares into those huge blue orbs. Her stomach flips. She suddenly finds herself lifting the mantle from her hair, shaking it loose. Ahsoka’s eyes widen. She lifts her hand towards the new discovery of the full head of hair. She stops herself, then takes a deep breath.

“Barriss, do you want to talk about what happened? On Geonosis or the medship?”

“No,” Barriss says, almost too bluntly.

Ahsoka exhales. “Thank the Force,”she says.

Barriss bursts out laughing, not expecting that response.

Ahsoka does look her in the eye. “Seriously—

“I know,” Barriss interrupts. “I appreciate it Ahsoka. I really do. I love talking to you, but, not now. Not about this.”

Ahsoka nods. She does reach up and brush a lock of Barriss’s hair off of her forehead, holding it between her thumb and forefinger.

Barriss finds that she is holding her breath, as Ahsoka looks down. It doesn’t look as if Ahsoka is breathing either. She closes her eyes, just as she sees Ahsoka doing the same.

She feels soft, pillowed lips against hers. She continues to hold her breath. The lips rest against hers, as if their owner doesn’t exactly know what to do. Neither one of them are breathing, but Barriss can somehow feel Ahsoka’s much more rapid heartbeat through her touch. Barriss searches her memory for what she had glimpsed her master doing, with who she surmised was a younger knight. She opens her eyelids slightly. Ahsoka is frozen, as if afraid to move.

Barriss doesn’t go for the full repertoire of what she had seen her master do. She doesn’t know if she can bring it off. Instead, she lifts her bottom lip a little higher, moving it in between Ahsoka’s slightly opened lips. She draws Ahsoka’s between hers, pulling gently at the upper lip. Ahsoka mirrors her movement slightly, before improvising on Barriss’s lower lip.

Barriss suddenly yelps as she feels one of Ahsoka’s predatory upper cuspids move over her lower lip with probably a bit more force than Shili’s other apex predator had intended.

“I’m sorry!” Ahsoka exclaims, scuttling backwards. Barriss manages to grab her hands, keeping her from moving too far back.

“It’s okay,” Barriss quickly replies. She runs her tongue over her lips, finding no coppery tang of drawn blood. She reaches up and touches Ahsoka’s cool cheeks, with both hands. “It’s okay. Are you okay?”

Ahsoka’s eyes widen, as if never dreaming that anyone would ask her if she was okay after she had bitten their lip. Or that she would be in a position to bite someone on the lip. She breathes a shaky breath. There is a hint of her former snark when she asks, “You do know that it’s a myth that Togruta are venomous, right?”

Barriss forces her face to go blank—serious. “I was ready to look for the antivenin in my medbag.”

Ahsoka gives that poleaxed look again, before Barriss lets the right side of her lips quirk up. Ahsoka shoves her. “Smartass,” she says. She closes her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“Sorry for what?” Barriss asks. She realizes that her hands are still on Ahsoka’s cheeks, even after the shoving.

“That I’m not very good at it.”

Barriss grins. “I don’t exactly have a great deal of experience at it,” she replies. She looks away, a knowing look coming over her features. Ahsoka smiles with her at the look in her eyes.

“Maybe we can practice this. I could probably spend a great deal of time at these sessions. Plus we’re both on equal footing, here.”

Ahsoka nods, as both of them rise to their feet. Ahsoka pulls Barriss into a deep embrace.

As she hugs her fellow padawan, Barriss doesn’t think of any Code, at this moment. She knows that Jedi are allowed to have physical relations and intimacy, as long as there isn’t deep attachment. She curses to herself as the rules automatically come to the forefront of her brain.

She thinks only of respite—respite from the hell of a war.

She pushes her head back from Ahsoka’s shoulder. She reaches over and starts the practice. She smiles against Ahsoka’s lips, as she remembers one thing that she had seen that distant night, with her master and her partner.

Ahsoka is shocked as Barriss’s tongue dips gently between her lips.

 _Not totally on equal footing_ , Barriss thinks to herself.

Later, after a great deal of practice, Barriss falls asleep against Ahsoka in her bunk. As she does, she realizes that in spite of Ahsoka’s cooler body temperature, she doesn’t feel the bone-chilling cold that had ushered her into sleep since her experience with killing the brain worms.

There is no sensation of worms crawling through her brain, either.

Not this night. Just one of dozens of nights of the Clone Wars, that had already past. The unknown numbers of nights to come.

Barriss Offee sleeps.

Ahsoka Tano watches her sleep. She reaches up and feels the slight bruising on her own lips. As her own eyes close, she sees a smile on Barriss’s features. She burrows deeper into Barriss’s arms, wondering if she had ever seen that particular smile on her friend’s lips.


End file.
